Continuous Third-Party Visibility
Continuous Third-Party Visibility, in a cybersecurity context, refers to the ongoing ability to monitor and assess the security posture of your third-party vendors or suppliers. It's about a clear, real-time understanding of the risks they might introduce to your organization.
Here's a breakdown:
Why it matters: Anytime a third party has access to your systems or data, they create a potential entry point for cyberattacks. Their security vulnerabilities become your vulnerabilities.
What it involves: Continuous third-party visibility uses a combination of tools and processes to track various aspects of a vendor's security, including:
Security Ratings: Assessing their overall security posture using publicly available information and security rating services.
Vulnerability Scanning: Regularly scanning their external-facing systems for weaknesses.
Dark Web Monitoring: Looking for leaked credentials or mentions of the vendor in illicit online forums.
Social Media Monitoring: Tracking their social media presence for security incidents or red flags.
News and Event Monitoring: Staying informed about any security breaches or incidents they might be involved in.
Compliance Monitoring: Ensuring they adhere to relevant security standards and regulations.
Benefits of Continuous Third-Party Visibility:
Proactive Risk Management: Identify and mitigate potential risks before they become breaches.
Reduced Breach Risk: A well-monitored third party is less likely to be the source of a security incident.
Improved Incident Response: If a breach occurs, you can quickly identify affected vendors and take appropriate action.
Stronger Vendor Relationships: Collaborating with vendors on security issues builds trust and strengthens your overall security posture.
Compliance with Regulations: Many industries have regulations requiring continuous monitoring of third-party risk (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA).
Tools and Technologies:
Various tools and platforms help organizations achieve continuous third-party visibility. These often include features like:
Automated Security Assessments: Streamlining the vendor risk assessment process.
Real-time Monitoring Dashboards: Providing a centralized view of vendor security posture.
Alerting and Reporting: Notifying you of any significant changes or security events.
Organizations can significantly reduce their supply chain risk by implementing continuous third-party visibility and improving cybersecurity.
ThreatNG is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that offers a robust suite of solutions for managing external attack surfaces, digital risk protection, and security ratings. Here's how its features would contribute to continuous third-party visibility and how it can work with complementary solutions:
How ThreatNG Helps with Continuous Third-Party Visibility
Superior Discovery and Assessment: ThreatNG identifies and evaluates potential vulnerabilities across various attack vectors. This is crucial for understanding the risks associated with third parties. You understand their security posture by proactively assessing their susceptibility to BEC, phishing, ransomware, web application hijacking, and other threats.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG provides ongoing monitoring of your third-party ecosystem. This allows you to track changes in their security posture over time and identify emerging threats.
Reporting: The platform's reporting capabilities enable you to generate detailed reports on your third-party vendors, including their security ratings, risk exposure, and compliance with regulations. This information can be used to make informed decisions about your vendor relationships.
Collaboration and Management: ThreatNG facilitates collaboration between your organization and vendors through features like role-based access controls and dynamically generated questionnaires. This helps ensure everyone is on the same page regarding security practices.
Intelligence Repositories: Access to dark web data, compromised credentials, and ransomware event information provides valuable context for assessing third-party risk. This allows you to identify vendors more susceptible to attacks based on their presence in these datasets.
Working with Complementary Solutions
While ThreatNG offers a comprehensive suite of tools, it can be further enhanced by integrating with complementary solutions:
Vulnerability Management: Integrate with a dedicated vulnerability scanner to gain deeper insights into the technical vulnerabilities of your vendors' systems.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Forward ThreatNG alerts and data to your SIEM to correlate with other security events and improve threat detection and response.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): Combine ThreatNG's intelligence with external threat feeds to enrich your understanding of the threat landscape and improve risk assessment.
Examples of ThreatNG's Investigation Modules and Capabilities in Action
Domain Intelligence: ThreatNG can analyze a vendor's domain name, subdomains, certificates, and IP addresses to identify potential vulnerabilities like exposed APIs, development environments, and known vulnerabilities. This information can help you assess the vendor's security hygiene and identify areas for improvement.
Sensitive Code Exposure: ThreatNG can scan public code repositories for sensitive information like API keys, credentials, and configuration files that the vendor may have inadvertently exposed. This can help you prevent data breaches and unauthorized access.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG can identify a vendor's use of cloud services and SaaS applications, including any unsanctioned or impersonated services. This can help ensure that your vendors adhere to your cloud security policies.
Dark Web Presence: By monitoring the dark web, ThreatNG can identify any mentions of your vendors concerning compromised credentials, ransomware events, or other illicit activities. This can help you assess their risk profile and take appropriate action.
By effectively using ThreatNG's capabilities and integrating it with complementary solutions, organizations can achieve continuous third-party visibility and significantly reduce their supply chain risk.
